Interviews: World Literature

The Harvard professor and author of No Joke: Making Jewish Humour identifies Tevye the Dairyman as the first standup comic and Sigmund Freud as Jewish humour's greatest analyst. She picks the best books on Jewish humour.

The Soviet writer bore witness to the horrors of Russia's World War Two and the Shoah — and deserves a place in literary history, says scholar Maxim D Shrayer. He recommends the best books by and about Vasily Grossman.

In Russia, it’s often fallen to writers to challenge conventions and speak the truth, says the translator and biographer. She makes a personal selection of some of the most exhilarating Russian short fiction

Modern America is a story of expanding frontiers, says the bestselling author. He tells us about five novels that shed light on the social history of his adopted homeland, from the late 19th century to the Great Depression